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I’ve seen her, and I scarcely know her husband.”
    â€œThey spend a lot of time in America. They’re in London now, though. He—Adolf—is getting richer every day.”
    â€œThat’s a good thing, isn’t it?” said Frances, rather timidly. She had an intimate enough acquaintance with the inconveniences of poverty to respect wealth, although she neither envied nor aspired to it for herself.
    â€œA very good thing.”
    There was a pause, and Claudia turned her gaze on her friend. Her expression was mournful.
    â€œI needn’t ever worry about Anna any more. D’you remember how I used to wonder what would become of her, and what she was going to do with her life?”
    Frances remembered very well. She could remember also the frantic unhappiness and anxiety of the elder sister throughout the series of violent and disastrous love-affairs that had so thickly bestrewn the path of Anna’s youth.
    â€œYou don’t worry about her any more, now?” she hazarded.
    Claudia hesitated—drew a long breath.
    Then she spoke.
    â€œI couldn’t say this to anybody but you, Frances —but you’re part of the past, Anna’s and mine. Frances—I’ve lost Anna.”
    Her friend could only echo in dismay: “Lost her!”
    â€œThere’s nothing real between us any more. You know what she and I were to one another, all through our childhood and girlhood. Anna was the person I loved best in the world. She is still, in some ways. But she’s changed terribly, in the last few years.”
    â€œChanged? But how?”
    â€œShe’s grown away from me altogether. I think it began when she married. You see, I didn’t like Adolf. I’ve got to face the fact that I tried to bring pressure to bear on Anna. I tried to direct her life for her. That’s what she resents. She’s never forgotten it, and I think—I think she’s never forgiven it either.”
    Claudia’s voice trembled.
    â€œI’ve got to face it,” she repeated, with careful candour. “I’ve domineered over Anna all her life, more or less, and she resents it—and always will.”
    â€œBut, Claudia—not
now.
Surely not now, when it’s all over, and she’s got her own life, and you’ve got yours.”
    â€œNo one knows how deeply those things sink in,” Claudia said sombrely. “Anna’s resentment of my bullying was probably subconscious for yearsand years. It was only after she married, and got quite free from me, that she really understood what I’d been doing to her.”
    â€œBut Claudia——”
    â€œYes, it’s quite true. I’ve got to face it,” Claudia repeated.
    Frances, deeply troubled and bewildered, could only look at her in mute sympathy.
    â€œYou’ve got Arling,” she ventured again. “I was so glad when you wrote and told me.”
    â€œYes. I wanted, almost more than anything, to see the children growing up where Anna and I grew up. They couldn’t have their early childhood here, as we had—though Maurice was still quite little when we came—but I think they love it.”
    â€œHow could they help it? And it’s all so wonderfully unchanged. Almost as if there’d never been the war or anything.”
    â€œThat’s what I feel. It’s a little bit like putting the clock back. Though, of course, it can’t be that, really. We haven’t got any of the land, you know. I could only buy the house and the park, and one field—the one between us and the farm—and it’s difficult enough to keep it all up as it is.”
    â€œIt must be, with things as they are now. Does—does Copper like it?”
    â€œAs well as he’d like anywhere, I suppose.”
    Claudia was silent for a moment, and then she used a phrase that she had used before, that afternoon.
    â€œI couldn’t say this to anybody but you.